Speech
New Zealand Indian Central Association
I begin by greeting everyone in the languages of the realm of New Zealand, in English, Māori, Cook Island Māori, Niuean, Tokelauan and New Zealand Sign Language. Greetings, Kia Ora, Kia Orana, Fakalofa Lahi Atu, Taloha Ni and as it is the morning (Sign)
I specifically greet you: Paul Singh Bains, President of the New Zealand Indian Central Association; Harshad Patel Vice-President; Raj Thandi, General Secretary; Raj Bedi, Assistant Secretary; Manjit Singh, Treasurer; Ratilal Champaneri, Immediate Past President; Paul Nanubhai Patel, President of the host branch, the Central Districts Indian Association; Executive Members, Life Members, Delegates and Merit Holders; Your Excellency, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, High Commissioner for India to New Zealand and Mrs Mehta; Members of Parliament Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi and Dr Rajen Prasad; Palmerston North City Councillor Tangi Utikere; Distinguished Guests otherwise; Ladies and Gentlemen.
In the context of today’s gathering, may I add the greetings: Kam cho, Namaste, Namashkar, Sat Sri Akal, and Salaam Wailaikum.
It has been a great pleasure for Susan and I to accept the invitation to attend the 85th Annual General Meeting of the New Zealand Indian Central Association.
It is just on three months since we were in India, where I had the honour of being Chief Guest at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in New Delhi and of being awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award from the President of India, Srimati Pratibha Devisingh Patil. It was an honour to follow in the footsteps in this regard, of previous New Zealand recipients, Her Worship Dame Sukhinder Turner and His Honour Judge Ajit Singh.
This year was the ninth Pravasi Bharatiya celebration, which is an opportunity for people of Indian origin to display and share their common bonds. It was a great privilege to be able to stand there as a proud New Zealander whose four grandparents had left India more than a century ago but who along wither their descendants have maintained some kind of link with India and its customs despite it being almost 130 years since my maternal grandparents left Uttar Pradesh, to be among some of the first indentured workers in Fiji followed by paternal grandparents 30 years later. To receive the award was also evidence of great generosity of spirit and solidarity towards the diaspora by the Government of India.
As many here may know, my parents were born in Fiji, and came to New Zealand to study and eventually to remain here. People of Indian ancestry have lived in New Zealand for at least 200 years with the earliest confirmed report – in 1810 – being that of a Bengali man jumping ship and marrying a Māori woman. Although as recently as 1976 only 6,300 New Zealanders were said to have Indian ancestry, since then, immigration has seen those numbers swell to more than 100,000, Indians thus becoming New Zealand’s second largest Asian ethnic group.
One of fascinating stories of New Zealand’s first non-Maori settlers concerns the discovery of gold in Otago. While Australian Gabriel Read is credited with having discovered gold at Tuapeka in Otago, it was an Indian man, Edward Peter, who told him where it could be found. Two years ago, we had the pleasure of travelling to Glenore near Milton in Central Otago to attend the unveiling of a memorial to mark the 150th anniversary of Peters’ discovery.
Before 1899 Indian people could enter New Zealand freely as British subjects. However, the Immigration Restriction Act 1899 then required that a European language be used to fill in the necessary application forms, and in 1920 a new Immigration Act introduced a permit system.
This was the background of restriction against which the New Zealand Indian Central Association was founded. I am personally conscious of some of that history, having had the pleasurable task of writing the foreword to Associate Professor Jacqueline Leckie’s book, Indian Settlers: The Story of A New Zealand South Asian Community and of reading the script before I did so.
The association was formed because the Indian community felt the need for a body to represent it; to promote harmony with other groups; to respond to misleading information about Indian people in New Zealand and to help members of the Indian community in all aspects of their lives. From just three branches in 1926, in Auckland, Wellington and Taumarunui, the Association has grown to have 17 today, with associate members like cultural groups as well as regional branches.
I think it is very clear that in all of the areas in which it set out to make a difference, the New Zealand Indian Central Association’s work has borne fruit. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the organisation on eighty-five very well spent years of operation. I believe that the Association has succeeded and prospered because it did not take an isolationist view. Instead it promoted a future for New Zealanders of Indian ancestry as people who could celebrate their Indian culture while also celebrating all that their new home has to offer.
An image that represents that approach can be seen on the cover of The Encyclopaedia of the Indian Diaspora, edited by Professor Brij Lal, Professor of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra Australia. On the cover is a photograph from the opening in 1953 of the Nehru Hall, New Zealand’s first Indian community centre in Pukekohe. Above the entrance to the hall, where Indian Association members are proudly standing, is a graphic representation of their emblem, the flags of New Zealand and India crossed and bound together.
The success of the Association can also be seen, at least in part, in the significant contribution to New Zealand’s economy and society of people of Indian origin working in business and coming to serve today as Members of Parliament, Judges and Lawyers, Doctors and Nurses, Engineers and Technicians, in Local Government and the Universities. Many are represented here today.
In my time as Governor-General, during the past four and a half years, I have also had the honour of investing several members of the association with New Zealand Honours, including earlier this week, your Vice-President Harshad Patel, who received the Queen’s Service Medal for services to the Indian community.
As my time as the Governor-General draws to an end, I have reflected on the changes to New Zealand in the 200 years since the first Indian settlers arrived. New Zealand has become a substantially multicultural and diverse society.
New Zealand’s largest city and the place of my birth, Auckland, is now termed a “super-diverse” city. According to the Massey University demographer, Professor Paul Spoonley, the fact that forty per cent of Auckland’s 1.4 million residents were born overseas means that it is the second most diverse city in the world – behind Toronto.
I would like to leave you with a challenge using the words of Mervin Singham, the Director of the Office of Ethnic Affairs and a fellow New Zealander of Indian origin. He gave his views on how New Zealanders must act in order to release the potential of our diverse society in contributing to a book called Longing and Belonging, which was edited in 2010 by Dr Edwina Pio of the Auckland University of Technology.
Mr Singham observed that: “Cultural awareness is the oil that makes the wheels of multicultural societies move more smoothly.” But he added that this cultural awareness must be active, not passive. He added: “My challenge to you is to think about how you can play a part in maximising the benefits of your diversity. Now is the time to turn out diversity into action. We must move beyond merely celebrating our cultures to actively unlocking the creative potential our diversity brings for New Zealand.”
And with that challenge before you, it gives me great pleasure to declare this 85th Annual General Meeting of the New Zealand Indian Central Association open. And with the formalities completed, I will close in New Zealand’s first language Māori, by wishing you all good health and fortitude in your endeavours. No reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora, kia kaha, tēnā koutou katoa.